French Lavender
by Sunshine170
Summary: "What is that?" She looks at the gift bag and then at him. "A present?" "If you had to call it that I suppose."


"Merry Christmas."

She raises a brow and another as Peter sets down a cup of coffee and something that looks very much like a present on her desk.

"It's not Christmas." She points out evenly, giving him a questioning look.

"Arbor day then…" He shrugs. "I don't know. Pick a holiday and we'll run with it."

"Why would we want to do that exactly?" She takes off her glasses as he takes a seat opposite her, picking up the case file she's set down.

He simply gives her a smile and shakes his head.

"What is that?" She looks at the gift bag and then at him, reaching for the coffee he unfailing brings her every morning. "A present?"

"If you _had_ to call it that I suppose."

"As opposed to calling it what now?"

He doesn't respond, reaching for a highlighter to underline something that has obviously caught his attention.

"It's barely a present." He deigns a response after a good minute has passed. "I was walking around downtown yesterday and I saw something that I thought you'd like, so I got it for you. No big deal."

It's a fairly believable statement and yet Olivia knows he's lying. Window shopping is not a quality a man like Peter possessed, the inclination to move about in a leisurely pace, aimlessly. No, he moves with too much urgency, purpose, an intention behind every action, a carefully calculated motive.

He doesn't just _see s_omething… he surveys, looks for it, seeks it out.

She clears her throat, rote responses to situations like these her mind activates without reflection. "You know I can't accept this"

"And why exactly is that?" He looks up at her then with a penetrating gaze.

"Because…" She shrugs, a thought half formed, mind sifting through every excuse possible till she decides on _inappropriate _which sounds ridiculous, even to herself.

"It's not because I want something." He reads her mind before she can say anything, a sad chuckle escaping his throat.

"Not everything I do has an agenda you know."

She knows. _She knows._ He doesn't play games with her, well not the kind where she'd have to wonder about bribery anyhow. It'd be easier if it were.

Manipulation as a motivator she can deal with_. Considerate,_ however, makes her wonder.

_Just because..._ scares her.

"So what's in the bag?" She shirks the doubts away, trying for once not to read too much into the situation.

"Why don't you wait till you get home to find out?" There's a hint of a challenge in his voice, an unspoken dare and Olivia almost rolls her eyes.

"How about you just tell me?"

"Where's the fun in that now?" He smiles, pure imp.

And Olivia could strangle him right then.

The paper bag, tall and elegant, a deep green, there's a hefty weight to it. Olivia's curiosity is more than aroused. But she's a good soldier and refuses to peek, thinks of anything but the present and purposely puts the offering in the backseat so she won't be tempted to look on her way home.

Probably a bottle of alcohol…whisky if she's right. But it's not.

It's…bubble bath.

More importantly, it's really expensive bubble bath, an almost empty bottle of which sits on her bathroom sink counter, an indulgence she had treated herself to a few months ago on impulse. It looks out of place, next to the drugstore brand functionals she usually purchases, economy size, loathe as she is to make trips to the local CVS any more regularly than she absolutely needs to.

High maintenance, Olivia is not. Water and anything that foams well and can get the job done pretty much sums up her entire beauty regimen, the world of luxurious, high-end products and $250 keratin treatments a far cry from her reality. Walking into the Bath and Body Works feels like an olfactory teenage fancy, Sephora is a maze of shiny things she'd never actually wear and she's never had the time to peruse through the carefully stacked shelves of a smaller, up-scale boutique or new age apothecary, the kind that excelled at selling overpriced rustic chic with European sounding names marketed for urbane American women.

But the bubble bath, Olivia loves. French lavender from Provence, its rich, fragrant and delicate, associations she is hard pressed to find in anything in her life nowadays. It has a way of transporting her, taking her from the ugliness she faces on an everyday basis and placing her somewhere far way in the South of France.

It's a simple escape route, easier than taking an actual vacation. Like maybe she could actually forget the horrors of her working day, even if it's just till the water runs cold.

In the middle of searching for brain melting perpetrators in her apartment, that Peter has managed to take inventory of her bathroom products and notice the bottle of bubble bath, uncharacteristic of her and yet well-used…

She's surprised, touched and a dash of something else that she's afraid to put a name to without feeling like a schoolgirl in the throes of a crush.

Later that night, she runs herself a bath and pours some liquid from the bottle into the water, agitating the surface a bit to let it foam, letting the fragrance permeate the air.

She inhales deeply in delight.

French Lavender has never smelt quite so wonderful, so full of hope and promise.

A long, hot soak is warranted, she thinks, where feelings regarding a certain civilian consultant will be processed.


End file.
